


Computers Are Elaborate Cat Beds, Actually

by errantwheat



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Relationship, and android!Gavin and Hank, and mentions of connor’s alcoholism, but I swear this is a cute fluff piece, if u squint Gavin has a crush, probably, reverse au, so u got human!Nines and Connor, there’s a very vague mention of a triple homicide in the beginning with implied child death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-12 21:52:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17475641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/errantwheat/pseuds/errantwheat
Summary: “Marvelous find, Gavin. They’ll promote you for this, surely.”Gavin pulled an exaggerated frown. He was awfully animated for a robot. “Jesus, What kind of human are you? I’m waving a fucking kitten in your face and you’re still a bitch.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been meaning to write this for god damn ever I hope you enjoy

“Hey, look at this,” 

Nines had been awake since three in the god damn morning dealing with a gruesome triple homicide. The murderer was found trying to rob a gas station, still spattered with the blood of his victims, just a few miles away from the quaint suburban house full of bodies he’d left behind. It was the kind of nightmare you’d like to think only happened on tv. 

And it was supposed to be Connor’s mess to deal with. He’d been called first, but he was surely either shitfaced in a bar or unconscious on the floor of his apartment. Or maybe he was just too important for little things like this, with that special deviant androids case to be concerned with. Either way, Nines was called second, and now here he was, running on an hour of sleep, two cups of coffee and surely over half a pack of cigarettes at this point, covering for Connor yet again. 

He’d been angry about it at first, but after seeing the grisly scene himself Nines was glad Connor had skipped this one. His brother dealt poorly with most things, but cases involving children fucked him up in particular. 

Not that Nines was numb to them. Nobody was. But he coped better than Connor did. he’d rather be here then get a call in the morning that his brother had drank himself into the fucking ER. 

Of course the android was waiting at the scene for him. 

Gavin was a GV200 model, experimentally upgraded courtesy of CyberLife. Apparently he had nearly all the capabilities of the fancy prototype the company had thrown at the department to assist with the deviant case. Did they think all these gifts would help them protect their image when the deviant case finally broke? Frankly the answer was above Nines’s paygrade. 

He didn’t particularly dislike androids. People wouldn’t pay thousands of dollars for them if they didn’t have their uses, and he never personally experienced the fear that they might replace him in his professional field- he knew his worth. But this particular android just happened to be an asshole. 

One too many blows to the head had clearly scrambled Gavin’s personality matrix and rendered him an insufferable dick. He was vulgar, ill-tempered, reckless, and noisy on a good day. At least he wasn’t boring. 

They’d just finished up their investigation. Really there wasn’t much to investigate, they just gathered the evidence. Gavin reconstructed the scene and scanned prints confirming the identity of the murderer, just in case the man they’d found had killed a different family and just coincidentally been caught nearby. Nines had stepped out to smoke another cigarette because the scene was practically burned into his corneas at this point, so he could afford to go chip away at his life expectancy with nicotine while he stared into space and felt bitter instead.

It was appropriately dismal outside. The rain was paused for the moment, but everything was miserably damp and dark and heavy in its wake, and the moon was still obscured behind a curtain of grey clouds. And it was cold as hell. 

And before he had an android partner Nines would be left to pensively kill himself so wonderfully alone. But now Gavin was standing in front of him.

Holding a kitten. A fuzzy little orange kitten. 

Nines flicked some ash to the ground. “Marvelous find, Gavin. They’ll promote you for this, surely.” 

Gavin pulled an exaggerated frown. He was awfully animated for a robot. “Jesus, What kind of human are you? I’m waving a fucking kitten in your face and you’re still a bitch.” 

“How would you prefer that I respond?” It was a very cute kitten. It would be extremely fluffy if it weren’t so soaked from the rain and matted with mud, poor thing. 

Grimly Nines wondered if it was a stray or if it had belonged to the family CSI was currently putting in bags. He took another very long drag of his cigarette. 

“I dunno, smile or something? You know what that shit is, genius? Smiling?” 

Gavin was almost undoubtably a deviant. Nobody would program a robot to act like this, even accidentally. 

But Nines wasn’t going to say anything. The android seemed content to do the work he was built for, he hadn’t had a breakdown and murdered anybody, so really, what was the harm? Certainly, Nines would have jumped at the opportunity just to be rid of him not too long ago, but now...

It wasn’t Nines’s case, anyway. His brother’s opinion of unsolicited assistance was crystal fucking clear. If he and his fancy prototype couldn’t detect a deviant right under their noses, that was their problem.  

“Why do you want me to smile?” 

Gavin’s LED blinked rapidly for a fraction of a second. “I just wanna know if hell’ll freeze over I guess.” 

“I didn’t know androids believed in things like that.” 

“It’s a fuckin’ expression, shithead.” Gavin was idly scratching the kitten under its chin. It looked quite content, clearly prescribed to the timeless love between felines and computers. 

“What do you plan to do with it now?” 

“Well I’m not just gonna let him run around in the street, it’s fuckin’ cold and filthy.” He could be so transparent, too. His LED flickered yellow every few seconds, and he had this coy look on his face. It was almost cute. 

“Do you think you’re going to just bring him back to live at the station with you?” Nines knew what he wanted, but he couldn’t just give in without a fight. It wouldn’t do to let the android learn he could walk all over him, now would it? 

“What is this, a fuckin’ interrogation? Cool it with the questions.” 

Nines took another slow drag of his cigarette and waited. He was, admittedly, finding this all rather amusing- though he wouldn’t smile about it, because then he would certainly lose.

Gavin finally broke. He ground his jaw and his LED flickered, and then he said, “obviously not, asshole. I uh-... thought maybe you’d take him.” 

“And grant you visitation rights,” now Nines couldn’t help but tease. 

He was rewarded with an honest to fucking God pout on the android’s face. 

A robot was pouting at him. The wonders of technology. 

So his obnoxious, crass, definitely-not-a-deviant android partner liked fuzzy little kittens. 

Nines decided to leave him hanging for a moment, idly putting out his cigarette and lighting the next. The android watched him, eyes following his hands, impatience and apprehension clear as day on his face, still drawn into a pout. It was uncanny for a machine. And admittedly effective. 

Of course Nines had a reputation to uphold as a cold and calculated hardass, so he silently pushed off the wall he was leaning on and started for the car. Gavin watched him, LED spinning yellow. 

“The fuck’re you going?” 

“Home. We’re done here.” The android was still standing in the same spot, confused. Gavin.exe has stopped responding. And maybe he looked a little dejected, too. Nines almost felt bad for teasing. “Are you coming or not? He needs food. And a bath, he’s filthy.” 

And Jesus Fucking Christ, the way Gavin’s dumb bastard face just lit up. He sped over, fucking slid over the hood of the car, and tossed himself into the passenger seat, grinning like a kid in a candy shop the whole way. His enthusiasm was nauseating. And a little bit cute, Nines dared to think again. 

Actually, what the hell was he doing? Was he seriously, in this moment, taking his android partner back to his apartment so he could? Play with some cats? Is that what he was doing? Was he having a stroke? Well, he was driving now, might as well just go with it. 

He had two cats already. One was a maine coon that forced him to vacuum the god damn apartment every other day named Agatha and the other was a calico with three legs and half a tail named Petunia. Agatha was somewhere in the apartment, probably on top of the refrigerator, that was her favorite place, and Petunia was waiting for them by the door, screaming. 

“Yes, yes, hello,” Nines scooped her up off the floor. Petunia required hello pets every time he walked through the door. If he were to step out and come back in, she would start screaming again. 

He kicked the door shut behind Gavin. The android was looking around, LED blinking yellow, deducing things about Nines’s life from minute details, no doubt. 

The place seemed spacious, but that was only because there was hardly anything in it. Nines didn’t care for clutter. The definition of clutter just happened to extend to things like photos and knickknacks as well. Cat toys, however, did not count. Ideally they would be put away in a box, but clearly the girls had fished them out while he was gone. So really, the only thing he could imagine Gavin assuming about him from this environment was that he might secretly also be a robot, whose life was controlled by two cats. 

Nines deposited Petunia on the couch and went to go run a shallow bath in the kitchen sink for Gavin’s new friend, leaving the android to think his thoughts in the entryway. When was the last time he’d had somebody else in his apartment? Somebody that wasn’t Connor on a holiday? Best he not ponder it, actually. 

Gavin joined him in the kitchen, unusually quiet. Maybe he was feeling vaguely uncomfortable as well. Nines would normally be grateful that the android had finally shut up, but the silence was objectively worse in this situation. 

“You can wash him off if you like,” Nines offered, stepping away from the sink, because Gavin had been holding the kitten for half an hour at this point and Nines was loath to separate them. 

The kitten squeaked indignantly and tried to claw its way up Gavin’s arm when he put it in the water, and he made this sound, a surprised little giggle, that made Nines die a little bit. He helped Gavin detach the tiny thing from his sleeve and then hastily reestablished a normal amount of personal space.  

“There, see? Water’s not so bad, huh? Way cooler than mud, right?” Remarkable. The dangerous deviant android. An absolute menace. A threat to society. Call the fucking police. 

Nines decided to busy himself making a cup of coffee, because watching Gavin gently rinse off a squealing kitten, shushing and cooing at it all the while, was giving him fucking heart palpitations. So he may as well pile on the caffeine, right? The time on the microwave read five thirty in the morning, anyway. Too late to go to sleep. 

Agatha finally descended from her perch atop the fridge to investigate the stranger in her home. 

“Evening, Ma’am,” Gavin greeted her as she came to sit on the counter next to him. Petunia had arranged herself on the kitchen table, occasionally standing up on two legs for a better view. 

Apparently this situation was considered a bizarre anomaly by everyone involved. Nines sipped his very hot coffee and willed his brain to fuck off. 

 

“Seriously? Agatha and Petunia? They sound like they belong in a fucking bingo hall.” 

Really, it was inevitable that they ended up like this, sitting on the floor instead of on the furniture, watching the kitten tumble around the living room. He was partial to a hot pink feathery string toy that Gavin was waving around for him. As Nines had predicted, he was indeed quite fluffy now that he was clean and dry. 

“That’s precisely the point.” 

“Jesus, lemme update my fuckin’ database, ‘Richard Anderson has a sense of humor and its shit.’” 

“Oh, please, until you can tell a joke that you didn’t find with Google I don’t think you get to be a critic.”

“For fuck’s sake, are you hearing this?” Gavin addressed the kitten currently savaging the string toy, adopting a notably higher tone of voice, “I give him a kitten and he’s still an ass to me, can you fuckin’ believe this guy?” 

“I thought you wanted him for yourself?” Nines still pointedly refuses to acknowledge the fallacy there, that Gavin wasn’t supposed to want things. 

“I mean, yeah, I like cats, but you were standing around lookin’ all...” Gavin gestured vaguely, LED yellow again. “‘Sides, I can’t keep em, so...” 

And didn’t that make Nines feel some shit he didn’t want to think about. If he was understanding correctly, it sounded like Gavin had wanted to cheer him up. Come to think of it, the grim contents of the last few hours hadn’t crossed his mind in quite some time. “Would you like to name him?” 

“Who, me? Uh...” 

“Using the Internet is cheating.” 

“Alright, alright...what about...Orange? Or Pumpkin. Bumblebee?” 

“Oh, I stand corrected, you can be funny,” 

“Fuck you, I’m not supposed to be creative.” 

“That doesn’t mean you can’t be.” Gavin gave him a wary look over that. Did he know he was a deviant? Surely he must. 

Nines had been aware and then forgotten at some point how close together they were sitting. Suddenly he was reminded. He was reminded because he felt this...irrational rush of protectiveness, and it made him really look at the android- who was very close to him- searching his face for something. If he knew he was a deviant, did it make him afraid? Was he afraid to be reprogrammed or deactivated? Did he associate Nines with all of those things? Nines didn’t find that he wanted to be somebody Gavin had to be afraid of. 

“Go on, just pick something you like.” Did he really have to say it so quietly? What the hell was happening to him. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation. 

“...I could call him Richard.” Gavin paused, as if he was done speaking, but then added, “you know, to match your other cats’ old lady names.” 

“There you go, being funny again. Technology is truly amazing.” 

“I want to name him Nacho Cheese Doritos,” Gavin announced, confidently this time, with a stupid wonderful grin on his face. 

“Lets go back to Pumpkin, that was cute.”

“No, he’s Doritos now. Isn’t that right?” Gavin scooped the kitten off the floor, “you like that, Doritos? Yeah, that’s what I fuckin’ thought, you’re Doritos now.” 

“Very well,” Nines sighed, just a touch exaggeratedly, “he’s Doritos now.” 

Despite Gavin’s insistance that he skip work and rest, Nines just supplicated sleep with a shower and another cup of coffee, promising as they left the apartment that he would leave work early and make up for the hours he’d lost. The reports on that murder weren’t going to write themselves, after all. 

Connor was there on time that morning, surprisingly. He looked hungover, but he wasn’t a complete mess. His HK800 android was offering him a coffee, gruffly chastising him for something or another. Coffee, coffee was such a good idea. 

“Nines,” Tina Chen was in the break room, and she was giving him the strangest face, like there was a joke he was supposed to get. 

“Yes Tina?” Nines responded warily. 

“I couldn’t help but notice that you and Gavin walked in together this morning.” 

Oh. Hm. 

“It’s not what it looks like.” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh whoops ! I did more :) this is very short sorry I hope you still like it !

“Yes, Gavin, what can I do for you?”

It was. Five in the fucking morning on his day off. And Nines had ten text messages and three missed calls from his god damn android. 

“I uh- nothing. I’m just- how...how are you?” Clearly Gavin had been prepared for a more hostile greeting. And his solution, apparently, was to return an equally confounding response. How are you? At five in the morning? From Gavin? 

What the hell?

If he were calling about a case, he would have just started rattling off the details, snapped an impatient ‘get the fuck down here, asshole,’ and then hung up. So what did he really want? 

A tiny, squeaky mewing beside Nines’s bed provided the vital clue. 

“Yes, you can come play with the cat.” 

“I wasn’t-“ Nines hung up the phone. Of course that’s what he wanted. Please. 

He rolled over to go back to sleep. And then sat up, and picked Doritos the kitten up off the floor and plopped him down on the bed, because clearly all the noise meant he wanted up, but he was too afraid to jump. Nines didn’t need him discovering that his claws would enable him to climb most soft surfaces quite yet. 

And _then_ he went back to sleep, with Doritos curled against his neck. Kneading needle sharp little claws into his skin. But that was fine. 

A typical day off for Richard “Nines” Anderson went as follows- he would stay up until fuck off in the morning the night before, continuing with whatever casework he’d been doing when he’d left the station that day. And then he’d sleep in, but not by much, because apparently his body had come to the decision that anything upwards of five hours was entirely excessive. And then he’d get up, shower, consume caffeine in any available form, then tidy up the apartment, do laundry or shop if needed. And then, because he simply couldn’t stand to sit idle, he would go back to the casework for the rest of the day. 

The datapads and folders and things were still scattered over the coffee table in the living room, with an empty glass and a quarter of a bottle of vodka he’d forgotten to put away. He didn’t drink anywhere approaching as heavily as his brother did, but he wasn’t above getting buzzed just because he could sometimes. Or because the cases were particularly grisly. Or because he needed something to put him the hell to sleep. 

Gavin was sprawled gracelessly across the couch, with Doritos asleep on his chest. 

Nines had made it to the kitchen and was half way through brewing a cup of coffee before he truly grasped that last bit.  

Gavin was in his fucking apartment, on his fucking couch, with his fucking cat and arguably had been since before he woke up.

“Did you break in to my god damn apartment?” Nines asked, coming into the living room with coffee now in hand. Of course he’d taken the time to finish making it. How else was he to process this, if not with coffee? 

“Shhh!” Gavin scowled at him sternly, gesturing to the orange fluff ball on his chest.

“ _You broke in to my apartment_ ,” Nines hissed, obliging the android for some fucking reason. An android shushing him in his own apartment. What had his life come to. 

“ _Obviously, dipshit. You said I could_.” 

That he had. He made a mental note never to say fucking anything while half asleep ever again. 

Thinking of the cats reminded Nines that he needed to feed them, but when he turned to do so, because he didn’t know what else to say to the android on his couch and he had to do something, their bowls were already full. Clearly Gavin had taken care of it. 

Well. That was nice of him. 

It’s not that Nines was particularly socially inept. He didn’t like socializing, but he could do it. In fact he was quite good at it. He could be an absolute charmer when he felt like it. But again, he nearly never had anybody in his space like this. 

He was just a private person, that was all. He preferred everyone at arm’s length. Or like, a whole yardstick away even. Maybe more. This was different. Things with Gavin always seemed to be different. 

Well. Nines didn’t have time for them to be _that_ different. He had a life to live, unfortunately, so he swatted Gavin’s legs out of his way and sat down to figure out where he’d left off in the mess of paperwork on the coffee table. 

And he was aware that Gavin was staring at him, but he chose not to acknowledge it. Because Gavin was here for the cats, and that really did not mean they needed to make this more awkward by trying to talk to each other. All the talking yesterday had been an anomaly. 

But of course Gavin was Gavin, and very Gavinly he did precisely the opposite of what Nines wanted. 

“Hey, Dick,” 

Why did God hate him. “Yes Gavin?” 

“When are you gonna show me the invisible spaceship you actually sleep in? This place looks like you just pretend to live here so people don’t ask questions.” 

“And you ask questions anyway?” Ah, there was the file he’d been reading. 

“S’what they built me for. You gonna answer me or what?” 

Nines squinted at the page. Where had he left off? Maybe it hadn’t been this page at all. He supposed that would be the hazard of trying to drink and use his brain at the same time. 

“Helloooo? Earth to jackass, are you fucking ignoring me?” 

“That would appear to be impossible,” Nines replied, dropping the case file back onto the table because he was just reading the same line over and over at this point. 

“Why the hell are you trying to work right now anyway? You get what ‘day off’ means, right?” Gavin was petting the newly awakened kitten now.

“I am familiar with the concept, yes.”

Doritos hopped to the floor and promptly launched himself into battle with a stuffed fish. Petunia approached to supervise. 

Freed from sleeping kitten jail, Gavin sat up. “There’s like, therapy for insomniac workaholics you know. Is it like a sibling rivalry thing? Were you not mommy’s favorite or something?” 

No, Gavin wasn’t interested in remaining at arm’s length whatsoever. Unfortunately it seemed to be in his programming to get under the skin instead. 

“Gavin.” The Android’s LED flickered yellow once, trying to assess his tone, probably. He was like a child sometimes, pushing buttons, testing where the lines were. “I appreciate what you were trying to do yesterday, and I’m not at all opposed to you visiting Doritos,” Jesus, having a cat named Doritos really just punched the seriousness right out of the rest of the sentence, didn’t it? “But it doesn’t mean we have to get...personal.” 

Gavin frowned, confused or conflicted. “I’m just tryin’ to figure you out. You know you’re kind of fucked up, right? Why don’t you do something about it? You’d actually be more efficient if you-“ 

“I’ve changed my mind, actually,” Nines had such a fucking headache coming on. He needed a cigarette, probably. A cigarette and anything but this conversation. “You can leave now.” 

“But-“ 

“Why does it bother you, Gavin?” 

The android’s LED turned yellow and stayed yellow. He glanced away and back before he tried to answer, “humans are easier to work with when their personal problems don’t-“ 

“No, that’s the bullshit answer you use instead of admitting you experience empathy. I’ll make you a deal,” Nines stood up now and went to snatch his cigarettes off the kitchen table. Gavin stayed on the couch, watching him with a red LED now. “I won’t ask questions if you don’t. Sound good?” 

It really wasn’t Gavin’s fault, and Nines was trying to keep that well in mind. Feelings must be so very confusing for him, and Nines shouldn’t have let boundaries start to fall. 

“I’m gonna go smoke, you don’t have to leave if you don’t want to,” he said, picking up that case file again as he passed through the living room on the way to the balcony. 

He still couldn’t really focus on it. He just smoked his cigarette, stared at the page, and waited to hear the sound of Gavin leaving. Not that he necessarily wanted the android to leave. He was really sending mixed signals, wasn’t he? That’s what came with personal bullshit, though- complications. 

Should he smoke a second cigarette? No, that felt too much like hiding. It was his damn apartment, he shouldn’t be hiding. 

“I’m not a deviant,” Gavin announced when Nines stepped back inside. His LED was blue again and he was still sitting on the couch. Was that a relief or not? 

“Cool,” Nines replied, picking Petunia up because she required her hello pets. “And I’m not fucked up.” 

“Cool.” Gavin sounded just a touch dejected, and Nines felt bad. But there wasn’t much to be done about it. So he just dumped Petunia into the android’s lap and put the case file back on the coffee table. 

“Would you like to give me your most professional opinion on this line from the report?” He asked, sitting beside Gavin again. 

Gavin scrunched his nose. Adorably, unfortunately. “Fuck no. If it’s your day off, it’s my day off. I want to do normal-ass day off stuff, like binge Netflix.”

Not a deviant indeed. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short sad boys chapter :(

Another night, another fill-in for Connor. 

The number of dead people had decreased, at least. By more than one, depending on who was asked.

At this point in life Nines had come to accept that being plagued with a headache was just his natural state of being. But the flashing neon lights of the Eden Club were approximately no help whatsoever. 

Chris and Gavin were waiting at the scene. Poor Chris. He could be at home with his family, but instead he was here, at a sex club, in a room with a couple corpses. 

One was a human man and the other was an android prostitute. 

Android prostitutes, what a fucking concept. There were protagonists of romantic literature that were less bitter and cynical than Nines felt looking at this place. Victor Fucking Frankenstein would love humanity more than Nines did at the moment. Why the hell did people need their sex toys to have anything even approaching sentience? That was fucked up, right? The sun needed to explode already.  

Thinking about the crippling vices of humanity also did nothing to help Nines’s headache. He wanted a cigarette desperately, he was sure it was allowed in a club like this, but Chris had been trying to quit lately, so he decided to be considerate. 

“Scans are reading that it was a heart attack,” Chris was explaining. He sounded tired.

Gavin stood a little further in the room, frowning at the scene, probably analyzing things. He looked conflicted, something wasn’t adding up. 

“What about the girl?” Nines asked. He couldn’t tell what had killed her, maybe the damage was all internal. The only blood to be seen was streaked across her face from her nose. 

“There’s no prints on her except his, so...” what did Chris think about androids? He seemed to have the good sense to keep his nose out of it all. Just stayed in his lane and did his job. Nines would love to be like that, except he was a nosy bastard and he had a deviant partner to contend with. 

“What the fuckin’ hell are you doing here?” 

Nines had been about to say something, to suggest that perhaps if they could get the girl working again they could talk to her, but the unthinkable occurred: his brother had actually showed up. 

“Hello, Connor. How good of you to join us,” Nines greeted. Chris wisely read the room and excused himself. “Are you feeling quite well? You look dreadful.”

Connor’s android gave a derisive ‘hmph’ beside him. So Hank had gone and peeled him off of whatever surface he’d blacked out on this time, hm? Good, he deserved to be held accountable at least once. He did look absolutely awful. 

“Oh, yeah, now that you mention it, I’ve had this thing in my pocket bugging me all day,” Connor shoved his hand into his shirt pocket and then pulled it out again with the middle finger extended. 

“How droll.” Nines deadpanned. He was such a god damn child, why couldn’t he just admit that he fucked up? 

“Whatever. You can go home now, we’ve got this covered.” Connor brushed past, obviously doing his best not to appear unsteady. Nines noticed that as Hank moved too Gavin avoided him like a magnet. 

Once Nines would have argued that he should stay and Connor should go home. What did he expect to do in this state? Why was he like this in the first place? He would have offered to do all the work, write the reports and everything and let Connor make of it what he would in the morning if he would just go home and rest and recover. 

But he knew better now. 

“Of course,” Nines tried not to sound angry but surely failed. He gestured for Gavin to lead the way and followed the android out. And lit a god damn cigarette the instant they left the establishment. 

Much the fuck better.

Once they were out of the presence of Connor and his plastic blood-hound, it was like somebody had hit the on-switch to Gavin’s personality. 

“Why the fuck do you let him treat you like that?” His apparent outrage was...unexpected. Ultimately unnecessary. And a little bit endearing. 

“I don’t know,” Nines breathed the words out with the smoke, “why are you a deviant?” 

That was the deal. If Gavin was going to ask personal questions, so would Nines. He felt a little guilty for the way he made Gavin recoil, how he visibly forced a cap onto his feelings, when from context it seemed as though he was upset on Nines’s behalf. 

“Don’t bother phoning a cab, I’ll give you a lift back to the station,” he offered quietly, as a sort of apology. 

They were in the car and on their way before Gavin spoke again. 

“I just...do stuff I haven’t been asked to do sometimes. I’m not a deviant. I’ve never disobeyed a direct order.” 

So they were doing this, were they? Nines didn’t want to do this. And yet Gavin looked and sounded...troubled. He was curled up in the passenger seat staring out the window, his LED yellow and spinning. And well, who wouldn’t feel something for that? 

“So if I ordered you to shoot me right now you’d do it?” Kind of an extreme example, admittedly. Nines could see Gavin’s little mood ring blink red for a second. 

“No? What the hell?”

“Why not? It would be a direct order.”

“I’m- I can’t use guns, it’s illegal. And your order would be overridden because I’m not allowed to kill humans. That’s like, a fuckin’ prime directive.” 

“Okay, fair, but you still...experience emotions. That’s a human thing.” 

Gavin didn’t seem to have a response for that. But he was clearly still distressed. 

He really should just leave it alone, but...“It isn’t...your fault. Somebody made you like this. There’s nothing wrong with you, Gavin.” 

Gavin stared at him over that one. And Nines avoided looking back at him, because he had to watch the traffic light, obviously, couldn’t miss it turning green. Then the android went back to staring out the window and things were quiet again for a short while. 

“Now you answer mine.”

God damn it. Well, if their deal went one way, it might as well go the other. 

“My brother is a neurotic, self-destructive, stubborn bastard.” 

“Look, no offense, but...you’re kind of both neurotic, self-destructive, stubborn bastards.” 

Ugh. Cigarette, he needed another damn cigarette. “Fine. But I don’t drink myself half to death every other night. Connor...has always been a perfectionist. And he’d rather fucking die than ask for help. Or accept when it’s offered. He won’t go to therapy, he won’t take medication, he won’t let me fucking take care of him.” had he ever actually talked to somebody about this before? Tina, most definitely, but they were surely both drunk at the time. 

Nines didn’t expect much in response. Gavin was already struggling with his own emotions, grasping other peoples’ emotions must be doubly confounding. 

So it was a bit of a surprise when Gavin said, “it’s not your fault, either.” 

They didn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride. But Gavin seemed to be feeling better, so mission accomplished? Nines lit a cigarette the moment he was on his way home. And it was incredibly hypocritical of him, he knew, but now that he was feeling things he couldn’t stop and it made him want to get drunk. 

_It’s not your fault_ , he kept thinking, laying in bed staring at his phone through the haze of too much coconut rum. His last text to Connor had been weeks ago, reminding him about a meeting he surely ended up skipping. There was no reply. 

How could it be anything but his fault? He knew the pattern, the vicious cycle they were stuck in. Connor scared him, so he closed himself off, which made Connor feel abandoned and alone, and when Nines turned around to reach out to him again, it made him feel like a burden, so he resisted, leaving them both angry and bitter. 

Nines started to type something, something like ‘call me if you need anything’, something Connor would inevitably ignore. And then he deleted it, because it would just make things worse. 

Just before he was about to lock his phone and toss it away, the typing icon appeared on Connor’s side. Numbly Nines watched it, it stayed there for nearly a minute and then disappeared. 

Nines dropped the phone on the other side of the bed and went to sleep, with Doritos the kitten kneading little claws into his face again. That was fine. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote most of this chapter drunk so don’t expect much !! Just a little Gavin pov...

The way it worked was that after hours, when all the humans went home, police bots were supposed to stand in their designated docking stations and power down for the night. Only two or three of them were specialized for security, running 24 hours and guarding the station while the humans were away. 

But Gavin wasn’t technically a standard police bot. He was an experiment. So by that logic it was perfectly fine that he was wandering around after hours instead of standing in his designated spot. 

One of the security androids halted in her march and silently inquired what he was doing. It wasn’t words exactly, it was like texting just a question mark. Gavin shot back something equating to ‘none of your damn business,’ and she seemed to accept it, moving on. 

He didn’t really know what he was doing, anyway. He wandered over to Nines’s desk, just because. Because why? Just because. **_^Software Instability_**. 

The dummy had left a scarf draped over the back of his chair. **_Negligent?_** Gavin’s system suggested as a potential note to add to the profile he’d built for the detective. He dismissed it. Nines wasn’t negligent, he was just...Nines. 

Gavin picked the scarf up and put it on, and then curled up in Nines’s chair, shrugging off the little shudder of software instability the action caused him. His scanners picked up traces of smoke on the scarf’s soft fibers. And cat hair, of course. **_Addicted To Cigarettes_** and **_Likes Cats_** were both part of his profile already. 

Part of Gavin’s head was waiting for him to explain himself. What was he doing? Why was he doing it? _There’s nothing wrong with me_ , he thought. That’s what Nines had said. He didn’t need to fill in those blanks. He wasn’t hurting anything. There was nothing wrong with this. 

**_^Software Instability_**. 

Whatever, fuck off. 

Nines’s workspace, like his home, was boring as fuck. Everything was organized and neat, there was nothing pinned to his board but case information and notes, he didn’t have a single personal object. The extra cigarettes in the top drawer didn’t count. Everyone else had _personal_ stuff. Connor had pictures and magnets and a dead plant.  ** _Overwatered_** Gavin’s scan informed him. 

He still didn’t really get it. Why was everything about Nines so fucking...repressed? It had to have some causal traumatic event, or even a whole series of events. Or maybe it was just something humans did- hurt themselves for no reason like Gavin was sitting here at this desk for no reason.  

_Why does it bother you, Gavin?_ He didn’t really know. Part of it had to be his programming, he was supposed to be inquisitive, to find problems and solve them. But mostly he just...liked Nines.

**_^Software Instability_ **

He liked Nines. 

He really liked Nines. He liked being around Nines and talking to Nines, he liked listening to Nines’s caffeine addled vitals and his miraculously functional lungs, he liked solving cases with Nines. He liked annoying the shit out of Nines. He liked sitting close to Nines in his apartment, playing with the cats. The image of that last one in his head, the visuals that replayed crystal clear from his memory made him dizzy he liked it so god damn much. 

So maybe it just bothered him that the person he liked so desperately was such a bitter lonely bastard. And maybe it was only his programming that wanted to fix it, but it was _him_ that wanted to _be_ the solution. 

The sound of the station’s front door opening snapped Gavin out of his daydreams about stopping bad guys and petting kittens. 

He was across the room and in his spot in an instant. 

He didn’t dare watch Hank pass through the office on the way to the evidence rooms with his eyes, but he listened. Hank had an awfully light step for something built so big. 

Gavin was, admittedly, a little bit terrified of him. Not that he had anything to hide. He wasn’t a deviant. Not really. But he wasn’t normal, either, and what if that was all it took? Then they’d take him away and fix him so he couldn’t like Nines anymore, or they’d just kill him. He didn’t want either of those things, he wanted to stay with Nines and be himself and-

“GV200.” 

Shit. 

Gavin opened his eyes slowly like he hadn’t been active. It was an unnecessary measure, Hank could read his stress level. He was probably lit the fuck up compared to the other androids around him. 

“What are you doing with that?” 

Oh. The scarf. He was still wearing the scarf, fuck. 

“Detective Anderson forgot it,” Gavin responded simply. Not too detailed, so it wasn’t obvious he was lying. He stared blankly ahead and stood perfectly still like a good little android with no orders to follow. No thinking or feeling, nope, none here. 

Hank regarded him for what felt like for fucking ever. He looked...a little roughed up. What the hell had happened back at that club? Gavin knew it couldn’t have just been a heart attack. He wanted to ask, but that wouldn’t be good little android behavior. Whatever happened must have Hank distracted, cause he just nodded absently after a moment and left, walked out of the station to go wherever he went while the humans were away. Where did he go while the humans were away? 

Gavin approached Connor’s desk now, quietly this time, even though he didn’t need to be. An android like Hank would have already compiled a report and submitted it, and of course he’d send Connor a copy. Gavin put his hand on the terminal- Connor used the same stupid password for everything- and there it was, sitting pretty in his email. He got another stupid software instability notification, because he most definitely wasn’t supposed to be doing this, but nobody had directly told him not to. 

The report was...vague. Too vague. A second android, a deviant, had murdered the human. It was found, admitted to the crime and everything, but escaped. No further details. 

This couldn’t be all of it. Gavin marked the email as unread again and shut everything off before going back to Nines’s desk, tossing himself gracelessly into the chair.

Come to think of it, despite the number of calls they’d gone out on, Hank hadn’t caught very many deviants. Just the one that had taken a kid hostage and the one that had smashed his own head in; they were hanging in the evidence room now. The three other calls since had turned up with nothing. That didn’t add up with the reports from the Phillips case. Hank was supposed to be efficient, meticulous, and ruthless. So how did these androids keep getting away? Something weird was up. 

Of course he was gonna tell Nines about it. Nines always gave Gavin this look when he was clever or when he found useful things that made him fucking shiver. And maybe Nines would give him that look and then promptly tell him it was none of their business, because spite kept him out of Connor’s affairs. But this could be important, more important than their petty self-destructive bullshit. 

Oh, and that reminded him. 

 

Of course Nines spotted the difference immediately that morning. He looked at it, and then looked at Gavin, not really accusingly, he looked more...resigned. Like, ‘of course the fuck you did. I know you wanna explain yourself, get on with it.’ It was really fucking cute, actually, did Nines know he was really cute, and funny, and wonderful? ** _^Software Instability_**. 

“Fuck are you looking at?” Gavin asked, putting on a grouchy expression. The absolute picture of innocence. He couldn’t resist teasing. Nines just rolled his eyes and started pulling up files on his computer. 

“Just thought your desk needed some fucking life, that’s all,” Gavin continued, fishing for a reaction. He’d printed out one of the many, many pictures he’d taken of Doritos and pinned it to the board at Nines’s desk. It was a tiny, bright orange spot of color in a sea of boring shit. Nines just hummed distantly in response. 

Gavin could tell Nines was screwing with him, pretending not to care on purpose. That was cool. Better than cool, actually, the human was all serious and no-nonsense with everybody else. Still, he wanted to know what Nines really thought of it.

“You can take it down if you really want to, not like I give a shit,”

“Mmhm,” 

Gavin moved to sit on the desk, for like, the drama. “It’s just, you know, what’s poor Doritos supposed to think if you don’t have any pictures of him around? Gonna think you don’t love him or something, that’s what,” 

“Hmm,” 

Fine, okay, two could play this game. “You know what, you’re right, it was dumb, I’ll take it down,” Gavin leaned to snatch the picture. 

“No, no, you can leave it. I like it. Thank you, Gavin.” 

Gavin recoiled like Nines had slapped his hand. That was not the projected response at all. _Way_ too fucking _nice_. 

“Jesus, did you get laid or something?” He hoped the fuck not. **_^Software Instability_**. 

“For the love of god, Gavin, make up your mind,” Nines had a smile in his voice and in his eyes that was doing shit to Gavin. 

“Why didn’t you do it yourself if you like it so damn much?” God, he was so flustered. 

Nines shrugged, scrolling through some report or another, still pretending like he wasn’t paying any attention. “Suppose I just never got around to it.” 

Well, if Nines wasn’t gonna get around to shit because he was a workaholic disaster Gavin would just do it for him. That felt kind of nice. He could _help_ like that. He wanted to help. Nines made him feel so _safe_ , made him feel like he wasn’t a malfunctioning machine. He just wanted to return the favor. 

“I have some of Petunia and Agatha if you wanna...” 

“Please, god, don’t expose me as a lonely old cat lady to everyone and their god damn mother. Would you like to work today or no?” 

Alright, okay, so they’d do actual work for now. But they’d definitely print out more cat pictures later, Gavin would make damn sure. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uhhhhhh??????????? Idk what this is there’s just feelings in it

The whole fucking world was going to shit around them and all Gavin could really think about was how Nines was holding his hand. 

Detroit was under curfew after the deviants had hit those CyberLife stores, and all androids in the city were supposed to be rounded up and turned over to the authorities so the humans could watch them. 

All the police androids had been commanded to stand at their stations and wait for the army to send a transport.

Gavin hadn’t wanted to stay put. He was too different, they’d see that and think he was a deviant and kill him. He didn’t want to die, but he couldn’t disobey his orders. They were like walls around him, trapping him in place.

He was scared, it was overwhelming, his processors couldn’t deal with it. He couldn’t think anything except that it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t his fault, he didn’t want to die. Error reports were filling up his vision, he felt like he was gonna crash, like he was gonna melt down.  

And then Nines grabbed his wrist and pulled him out of line. He led Gavin downstairs and told him they were going home, he put a standard issue police jacket on him to cover the bright blue patches on his android uniform and stuck a bandaid on his nose to cover the scar where his body had never quite repaired itself all the way. 

Last, he pulled Gavin’s LED out for him, because Gavin asked him to. Because he wanted Nines to touch him. He’d been thinking about it for the last ten minutes, how bad he wanted Nines to hold him and tell him he would be okay, that there was nothing wrong with him. He kept preconstructing it, over and over, and when Nines offered him a knife to take the little light out of his forehead, he couldn’t help but be selfish. “Do it for me, I can’t see it.” 

So Nines held Gavin’s head in place gently with one hand and pried his LED out with the other. He did it so delicately, like he was afraid to hurt Gavin.

It made something inside Gavin feel broken. He got another error report and everything. Did Nines understand that he was the only one who would touch Gavin like he was a person that could be hurt? Did he get what that did to Gavin? Hopefully not, if that meant he’d keep doing it. 

He decided in that instant that he was in love with Nines. Nines was literally stealing him from the department, disguising him as a person, and taking him home. Nines was risking his job, maybe his life, just to protect Gavin, and Gavin was in fucking love with him. 

It didn’t make him feel unstable to think it like emotions normally would, in fact it did the opposite. It felt good to be so certain of something, like a rule he could live by instead of some stupid programming. 

And he didn’t even fucking care if anybody noticed them leaving because Nines was holding his hand. He was focused on that and nothing else. Not the soldiers standing just outside, not Nines smoothly pulling him around the other side of the building, he only started to realize something was happening when Nines let go of his hand and pushed him against the wall. 

“What-“

“Would you mind if I kissed you?” 

“Wh-“

“Gavin.” It was like his god damn senses suddenly switched back on and zoomed way the fuck out to register the footsteps coming at them. One of the soldiers, they’d turn the corner any second and find them, and figure out Gavin wasn’t a human, scan him or ask him for an I.D., and then-

“Gavin-“

Gavin dragged Nines in by his jacket and kissed him. And Nines didn’t miss a fucking beat, hooking a hand under one of Gavin’s thighs and pulling it up to his hip like they’d been at this for more than half a second. Gavin was surprised he didn’t just bluescreen, just absolutely crash. His head was trying to show him data it was getting from Nines’s tongue in his mouth and it was all incomprehensible, scrambled and corrupted by the  _feeling_. 

He wanted this, obviously, but he really hadn’t expected it quite so soon after deciding he really  _really_  wanted it. Was that needy sound him? Yeah, it was him. What could he say? It was his first kiss. 

He hardly fucking registered the incredulous laughter at the end of the alley. 

“Oh, Jesus, come on officers, doesn’t this count as public indecency?” 

Nines pulled away and Gavin genuinely felt disappointed. “The world’s fuckin’ ending, what do you want?” Nines snapped. He sounded different, more like Connor. He sounded like an asshole. Gavin almost giggled. 

He hadn’t let Gavin go, like they’d be perfectly content to pick up where they left off if this soldier would just mind his business. They couldn’t see his face, but Gavin guessed he was grinning at them. Gavin tried to grin back, like he was embarrassed for being caught. He was pretty flustered, admittedly. He was hyper aware of Nines’s warm body so close, of the proximity of their hips and the hand on his thigh. 

“Just get outta here,” the soldier waved a hand at them and turned to go back the way he came. 

Nines rolled his eyes and pulled Gavin away from the wall. “Fuck’s sake, let’s go,” he groused, tossing an arm around Gavin’s shoulders. 

“I’m sorry,” he said as they were getting in the car. He almost sounded a little flustered as well. “I figured you could either punch me or kiss me, but if you punched me it might have looked weird to leave together.” 

“No, yeah, I get it. It was good. Uh- Smart, I mean. Good thinking.” Please, please, fucking  _god_ , he wanted to do it again. Gavin had like, three new favorite memories all in one day. 

He didn’t feel as scared anymore. How the fuck could he? He was in _love_. His whole system felt overclocked, and he kept replaying the kiss in his head. The entire context of this situation was practically deleted from his memory- Nines had held his hand and kissed him and was bringing him home like they were in a fucking movie, that was all. Revolution who? 

Gavin was the one that scooped Petunia up for her hello pets this time. “I know, I know, I’m happy to see you too.” He really was. He was happy to see the cats, and happy to be here. 

Nothing about the place had changed much, naturally. A couple of the pictures they’d printed of the cats were sitting on the kitchen table, Nines hadn’t put them up anywhere yet. Gavin was gonna tease him about it, but Nines had made immediately for the balcony with his cigarettes. 

And that was what slapped Gavin awake and reminded him what was going on. That he was here because if he wasn’t he’d probably die, and if anybody found out he was here he’d probably die, and Nines would get in big trouble for trying to protect him. 

This kind of situation didn’t leave any time for shit like doubts or pining. 

That was the thought Gavin held in his head as he marched outside, turned Nines around and pushed him back against the railing. 

His second kiss was way less overwhelming. Gavin shut off his analysis program and just _felt_ it as humanly as he could. 

He liked kissing a whole fucking lot, he decided. He liked being in Nines’s space, he liked Nines’s heartbeat under his hands, he liked Nines’s soft lips and his mouth. 

“I- I think I may have confused you,” Nines said when Gavin leaned back to let him breathe. He seemed a little flustered again, it was a cute look on him. He hadn’t exactly taken over like before, but he hadn’t stopped Gavin either. 

“I’m not confused.” Gavin smoothed his hands over Nines’s shoulders, let them wander up into his hair. He liked the way it made Nines’s pulse jump. 

“When I kissed you before it was because-“

“I’m not stupid, dickhead.” Just because he wasn’t confused didn’t mean he knew how to explain himself, though. That’s when the self-consciousness finally kicked in.

“I just- you-“ Was he doing this wrong? How was he supposed to make Nines get that he loved him? Would Nines even love him too? He cared about Gavin, he had to or he wouldn’t be here. 

Just chill the fuck out, Gavin tried to tell himself, chill the fuck out and say what you’re feeling. “You’re risking so much for me and I-“

“That doesn’t mean you have to-“

“No, shut up, look, you-“ Gavin thought back to Nines holding his head still and pulling his LED out, why it was so special.  

“Nobody’s ever made me feel real like you do.” 

The look Nines gave him was almost hurt and Gavin felt himself start to panic a little. He’d fucked it up, maybe he should have gone slower, maybe he should have downloaded a book on this kind of shit or something. 

But then Nines’s hands were on his face, like before, gentle like he’d break, and Gavin really  _really_  wanted to kiss him again. 

So he fucking did. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another meandering update for this fic pls enjoy

Nines almost didn’t hear his cellphone vibrating on the bedside table, he was so preoccupied with the android in his lap kissing his absolute brains out.

What brains remained were screaming, ‘what the fucking hell are you doing?’ Sadly, Nines didn’t have enough left to come up with an answer. 

And anyway, it was probably better for his health that he was doing this instead of chain-smoking and thinking about how dead they were if anybody found them out.

When he finally bothered to pick up the phone and looked at the caller ID, Nines almost didn’t believe his eyes. For a second he considered ignoring it. But in the end he couldn’t just let it be, as usual. 

“Connor?”

“Richie are- are you watching the news?” Connor sounded drunk, but more than that he sounded distraught. All of Nines’s petty presumptions about the nature of this phone call were immediately dropped without a second thought. 

“No, whats- oh. Oh, shit.” The TV switched on, Gavin’s doing surely, though there was no blinking LED to confirm it. Nines missed the little light, just a bit. 

It was nearly 11 PM and the military was raiding the deviant hideout, mercilessly butchering every android in sight. It was being covered on every news channel, local and national, in gruesome, unflinching detail. 

“God...fuck, Richie I  _can’t_ \- I can’t  _do_  this shit again, I can’t, I can’t-“ 

Every word he was hearing, every thing he was seeing was tying Nines’s guts in tighter and tighter knots. He nudged Gavin out of his lap and stood up.

“Connor, I don’t understand, what-“

“Hank’s  _there_ , he’s there, and he won’t answer me, I- I don’t know if he’s alive or hurt or- or-“ 

Nines was already tugging on his clothes, curfew be damned. Where the hell had he thrown his shirt? Gavin was wearing it, he remembered. He was still sitting on the bed watching Nines with a worried expression. Nines was very distracted for a moment by the sight of him. By how he _liked_ the sight of him half naked in his bed.  _What the fucking hell am I doing?_ He thought again, numbly. 

“I’m coming over, okay? Shut the TV off.” Nines hung up the phone and dropped it on the bed so that both his hands were free to grasp Gavin’s shoulders. “Will you be okay here on your own?“ he asked. 

“Yeah,” Gavin replied, nodding. Nines really did miss his LED. It had made it so much easier to tell how the android was feeling. 

He didn’t really want to leave Gavin alone. Part of it was that he didn’t want him out of his sight at such a dangerous time. And part of it was that his dumb, stupid traitor heart really _really_ enjoyed these last few hours. But it would be too risky to take the android with him. 

Nines leaned down and kissed him one more time, dragging his hands through Gavin’s hair. It was an adorable mess at the moment. 

Eventually he was going to have to resolve...whatever this was. He was going to have to think about it and feel guilty about it and smoke a pack of cigarettes about it. But he’d do all that after he made sure his brother would survive the night. 

Nines stole one more kiss, just _one_ more before he left. 

Connor lived in a little house on the south side. Nines was almost surprised he still knew how to get there, it had been forever. He’d urged Connor to move out, get an apartment closer to the city that didn’t have so many memories, but the stubborn ass wouldn’t do it. 

There was still a spare key under a dead potted plant on the front porch. At this point, it was just there in case Connor forgot his keys at the bar or something. At least he had the sense to lock his door. 

Nines let himself in. The house looked alright, in fact it looked particularly orderly. His brother must have had a good day recently, or perhaps it was Hank’s doing. 

He found Connor curled up on his side on the couch, disheveled with tear-tracks on his face and a nearly empty bottle of whiskey abandoned on the floor in front of him. His blank, unfocused eyes were fixed on the TV, still on and set to the news. Sumo was laying on the floor in front of the couch, looking up at Nines with his big sad eyes. 

Nines turned the tv off and knelt in front of his brother. God, he hadn’t done this in so long. Could he even remember how? This used to be such a familiar thing to him. 

They’d lost so much in their sad little lives. First their parents, though they had been too small to really grasp that one. People used to say ‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ all the time and Nines hadn’t really understood it. He hadn’t felt like he’d lost anything. 

He got it when they lost Amanda, though. She’d taken them in and raised them and loved them and died far too soon. And even then, Nines couldn’t take it too hard, because who else would hold poor Connor together? Despite his best efforts, he still couldn’t hold poor Connor together after all the red ice case took from him. 

How could he hope to do any better now? 

Nines hesitantly carded his fingers through Connor’s hair, fixing it back into something approaching presentable.

“Hi Connie,” he said, as softly as he could. 

Connor’s eyes focused on him, and the corners of his mouth pulled down in an exaggerated frown, like a child. He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Nines’s neck, pulling him into a hug. It absolutely broke his fucking heart. 

Already part of him was telling him to get the hell out of this. To cut himself off, to keep his distance like he always did. Because this fucking  _hurt._

But instead he held his brother and stroked his hair, because Connor needed him. 

“I can’t do this again,” Connor croaked pitifully. “I _love_ him, Richie, I love him so much...” 

“I’m sure he’s alright,” Nines soothed, “he could walk through your front door any moment.” Or he could be dead with all the others. But that wasn’t a comforting thing to say. 

Honestly, Nines hoped to god Hank survived the night, so that he could murder the android himself for making Connor feel like this again.

Well, that would be rather counterproductive actually. But still. 

Nines disentangled himself from Connor’s embrace as gently as possible, patting his brother’s arms back into place against his chest. “I’m going to go get you some water, okay? Don’t go anywhere.” 

Connor mumbled his assent against the couch cushions, and Nines stood up and made for the kitchen. 

His brother, in love with a robot. Twins indeed. Did that mean Hank was a deviant? That would be almost hilariously ironic. Maybe there just wasn’t a difference anymore, maybe they were all deviant from the beginning. 

Nines caught his thoughts wandering to Gavin as he filled a glass for Connor. He caught himself _missing_ Gavin. Was he scared? Was it right to leave him alone? 

What choice did he have? He couldn’t just leave his brother like this. 

Nines coaxed Connor to sit up and washed his face with a warm cloth, then passed him a glass of water. Being vertical didn’t seem to agree with him as much, but he managed to stay upright on his own and drink. Nines settled in next to him, again feeling a little at a loss for what to do. 

Normally the silence wouldn’t bother him, but he felt like talking would help Connor calm down. 

“I stole an android today,” he confessed conversationally. 

“I’m calling the police,” Connor mumbled, leaning into his shoulder. 

“I just...” what was he trying to say? He supposed he wanted Connor to know it was okay. That he was okay, that he wasn’t alone, that his feelings weren’t wrong. Christ, would he even remember this in the morning? “I couldn’t...let him die.” 

“Lemme guess,” Connor linked their arms together. Sitting this close made Nines feel sort of nostalgic, in a way that hurt. They used to be so _attached_. “He just barged into your fuckin’ life and made it all better.” 

“The opposite, arguably.” Nines caught himself smiling fondly, though. Gavin was a lot to handle, naturally, but his disposition aside it was because Nines just wasn’t used to somebody _caring_ so...persistently. He’d gotten _much_ farther with that persistence than Nines would have ever expected him to. 

“Did he...just walk in an’....n’make you feel like maybe you could be okay again...” slowly but surely Connor began to lean more heavily into Nines’s side. He seemed to be talking more to himself than anything. “Make you feel like you might not be such a fuck up...”

He should really put the poor thing to bed, Nines thought.

He should put Connor to bed, because his brain was trying to connect dots between what Connor was saying and his own life and Gavin, and he really didn’t want to see that whole picture at the moment. He was still putting off one hell of an existential crisis for later. Fuck, they _were_ fucked up. 

“Come on Connie,” he said, gently guiding Connor to his feet. Standing proved an even greater challenge for him than sitting up, and Nines held him steady and waited until he stopped looking like he was going to lose all that whiskey on the poor living room rug before proceeding down the hall to the bedroom, one unsteady step at a time. 

Connor flopped gracelessly facedown on the bed and Nines had to convince him to lay on his side instead, so he didn’t choke if the moment that his body inevitably rejected the gratuitous whiskey he’d consumed happened to come while he was sleeping. Then Nines crawled in beside him, resolving to stay only a few hours, just until he was sure Connor didn’t need him anymore. 

Idly Nines checked his phone, dimming the screen brightness as far as he could for Connor’s sake. Gavin had sent him no less than ten pictures of his cats. Perhaps they were subtle assurance that he was still safe at home. God, Nines had somebody at _home_. He had to be dreaming. 

The springs of Connor’s mattress protested loudly as Sumo hoisted his enormous ass onto the bed and curled up in whatever space was left for him, his big fluffy head resting on Connor’s legs. Nines took a picture of him and sent it back to Gavin, which earned him an emoji with heart eyes in response. 

Sweet god in heaven, he was coexisting peacefully in the same room with his brother, in the same bed even, feeling all fond and fluttery over text messages from an android who was waiting for him to come home. What the fucking hell was he doing. 

Well, it was fine for now, he supposed. He could let it be, just for now. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading !


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